Human corps planning: a first-order computational model

Human authors have attempted to identify a plausible first-order model which characterizes the high-level control cycle of expert human planners in the task of battlefield planning. Literature on the training of battlefield planning experts, interviews with expert planners, Army doctrine, and observations of planning activities of human experts were used to construct the model. The model is evaluated against a verbal protocol of a simulated corps maneuver-control planning exercise conducted at the US Army War College. It is concluded that the most striking aspect of the protocol for this planning problem is the interleaving of the task of subproblem formulation with the tasks of subproblem decomposition, plan critiquing, and plan repair. The evidence from the protocol is shown to be consistent with the ordering of these tasks as predicted from the first-order model